Most of the inverter/chargers have bigger ratings as inverters than as
chargers. This mostly makes sense -- for the average user, the
inverter's continous rating will rarely be used for very long, while
the charger's rated output will be used on every charge. Battery life
is cloesly related to the rate at which you charge and discharge them,
so generally at battery set that's good for 1,000 watts every now and
then should not be charged faster than, say, 500 watts.

With that said, the spec on your charger
http://www.xantrex.com/products/product.asp?did=555&p=2
says that it will do 50A on the charge side -- still only 70% of the
AC rating, but a lot more than the 15A you're seeing.

I suggest you put a DVM across the battery posts while charging and
see what you get. It's possible that your "old but serviceable" 8Ds
are not as serviceable as you think -- that they've developed a high
internal resistance in one or more cells. Unfortunately there's not a
lot you can do, as gel cells can't be equalized.

It's also possible that you're losing power in a lose connection
somewhere -- that's both frustrating and dangerous.

Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com




(Larry W4CSC) wrote in message ...
That's all the CHARGING circuit of your Heart is capable of putting
out. The 1000W is for the INVERTER in it, not the little 10A charger.
1000W/14V= 71Amps. That's gonna be one BIG charger!



On 9 Oct 2003 19:10:53 -0700, (mitch) wrote:

Can't believe I'm the first person with this problem, but did a couple
searches and turned up nuttin...

Have a 1000 Watt Gasoline Yamaha generator connected to a Heart
Interface Freedom 10. Batteries are a pair of 8D gels in parallel,
old but servicable. Monitoring system by Ample Power.

Hook 'em all up, and with batteries at about 50% (12.1 to 12.2) I get
a MAX of 15 amps DC, call it 180 watts into the batteries. Swapped
generators, EXACT same output. A visiting cruiser suspected that the
Heart is REALLY inefficient at generator-based power charging. Maybe,
but 20% efficient sounds a bit loony...

I am currently at anchor for awhile, so the purpose of the Yamaha was
to not require using my Perkins 4-108 with 150 amp alternator in order
to keep my beer cold; I'd rather save my engine for propulsion. But
when I do use the engine to charge, it works as expected based upon
state of charge - 130 amps initially, 3 stages, yada yada.

Ideas?

SV KOMFY
American Samoa


Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?